Saturday, 10 December 2011

Trai issues consultation paper for FM Radio

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has sought the opinion of stakeholders whether it would be acceptable if the minimum channel spacing within a license service area can reduced from the current level of 800 KHz.

In a consultation paper on "Issues related to prescribing minimum Channel spacing, within a license service area, in FM Radio sector in India", Trai has asked stakeholders to consider the implications of reducing/not-reducing the minimum channel spacing within a license service area. Furthermore, should the reduction of minimum channel spacing be confined to A+ and A category cities or should it be reduced across the country, and how should funding for the modification of transmitting setups be funded.

Stakeholders have been asked to send in their written comments by 26 December and counter-comments by 2 January 2012.

The Paper says that a second solution suggested by the operators requires a separate common transmission infrastructure (CTI) which includes transmitting tower, combiners, feeder cable, transmitting antenna etc. Effectively there would be two CTIs, one existing and another new one.

Trai has pointed out that after the policy for Phase III was declared for 839 new private FM channels in 294 cities in July, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry had asked the regulator to study the issue of reducing channel spacing in view of the demand from operators in A+ and A cities which have already been covered in the first two phases.